Posted tagged ‘Abercrombie’

My last “serious” column before going on vacation was about Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s tendency to orate over and over about the state’s problems without having new progress to report in solving them.

A reader wrote in using a word to describe the governor that I haven’t heard since my days in Hilo High — “waha.” It technically means “mouth,” but carries a broader meaning of all talk and no action.

I started to see a pattern when the word popped up again in another e-mail containing what the reader said was an old Hawaiian saying:

Hana ka hoe (Work the paddle),
pa‘a ka waha (close the mouth).

These struck me as very profound words whose applicability went well beyond the governor to everybody in public life from the local City Council to the U.S. Congress — and maybe even those of us who comment from the sidelines.

As we come out of Labor Day supposedly renewed for the rest of the year, we’d make more progress toward getting past our differences and solving our stubborn problems if we all paid more attention to working the paddles.

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We always knew that Gov. Neil Abercrombie would likely be full of more surprises than previous Hawai‘i governors, and he demonstrated it with his appointment of the Rev. Marc Alexander as his homelessness coordinator.

Alexander, who is stepping down from the No. 2 position in the local Catholic church to take the job, has been a prominent voice in the church’s fervent opposition to gay unions, the issue where the sun rises and sets for many of Abercrombie’s core supporters in the Democratic Party.

It’ll be interesting to see if they’re willing to look past single-issue passions and see what Abercrombie does — that Alexander’s background and skill set, especially in strategic planning, may make him uniquely qualified to tackle one of Hawai‘i’s most painful and stubborn problems.

Who knows what to read into the rather ungracious reaction from Hawai‘i Catholic Bishop Larry Silva that he “was shocked and extremely disappointed by (Alexander’s) decision to withdraw from priestly ministry.”

Helping the homeless seems a noble enough calling.

For Abercrombie, it shows not only that he’s willing to bring diverse talent into his administration, but that he’s succeeding in attracting some unlikely allies to help implement his vision for Hawai‘i.

Update: An initial reaction from the Democrats’ LGBT wing in today’s Star-Advertiser:

“One has to question whether he will be effective in counseling runaway gay youth,” said Jo-Ann Adams, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender caucus. “Many of the (homeless) people here are thrown out of their homes when their parents find out that they are gay.”

Somehow, that doesn’t strike me as where the heart of the homelessness problem lies.
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If you’re not ending the week brain dead enough, I leave you to wrap your mind around this posting I found from Keith Haugen on Facebook:

This year we will experience 4 unusual dates…. 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11 …. NOW go figure this out…. take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be this year and it WILL EQUAL TO 111… It works for everyone…